Implausible
by PresidentTheAwesome
Summary: Quick one shot about River's struggle to have children.


_**Something short I came up with on my day off. I haven't written these two for what feels like a life time so apologies for its terribleness. Not linked to my other River/Doctor stories.**_

_River, you know I can't give you children._ He had said.

Years later, in the cold steel bathroom of her cell she violently throws up what little she had managed to eat of her prison meal. She feels dizzy and sick and she _aches_ from head to toe. She hasn't seen the Doctor in a while – well, not _her _Doctor. Not her husband. The times between their meetings are getting few and far between and these days she's lucky if she gets one who even knows her at all, who _really _knows her. There's a cough behind her and it takes all her energy to lift her head out the rim and see who it is. A prison guard stands awkwardly by and informs her that it's time for her medical. She merely sniffles before burping up more vomit.

* * *

They do the usual poking and prodding, they measure her height and note down her weight and by the end of it they give her some news.

As 'luck' would have it she's expecting. Of course they'd told her she wouldn't be allowed to keep the child once it was born and so then said that it would be arranged for it to be taken to Earth – and that's all they would tell her on the matter.

She can't bring herself find the Doctor and tell him. Not yet.

That night she curls up beneath the thin sheet of her prison bed and wills all thoughts of the life she's carrying to just disappear. It takes a good few hours before she drifts off into comfortable sleep.

* * *

She doesn't tell her parents, they don't need to know – not yet anyway.

They still travel with the Doctor and she doesn't know which versions of him they're going to meet. One slight slip up and she's worried it could cause their timelines to collapse or something. Plus she's never had any inclinations from the Doctor that they have a child in the future so it must have been kept well under wraps. Yes. She'll keep it to herself for now.

* * *

At 13 weeks she has the tiniest of curves. Not big enough for anyone to really notice but she knows it's there and of the life that is stirring inside her. She tries to ignore it. The morning sickness is still pretty brutal but it's become part of her routine now. She wears looser fitting prison t-shirts and tries to eat a little more. The Doctor doesn't visit – not once.

These days River tends to break out on her own more often, a gun strapped to her hip and lipstick hidden safely in her swelling cleavage. She liaises with other men, not an unusual occurrence for the Time Lady. Upon marrying the Doctor she never agreed to a life of monogamy, not that the Doctor may or may not be aware of this but still, where is he when she needs him?

* * *

She thinks she feels it flutter. She can't be certain but whilst she was changing she was sure something inside her _moved_. River couldn't deny that just the feeling of his/her presence was a comforting feeling she was happy to get used to, she didn't feel quite so alone anymore.

Standing infront of the floor length mirror she turns this way and that, viewing her body from different angles to try and notice the changes. The only things she could really notice where that her breasts had become slightly heavier and more tender and the extra weight around her lower midsection was becoming more noticeable.

She keeps her diary up to date with these small changes as well as how far along she is.

* * *

''But it's impossible! River… We're simply not _compatible_''

''Not impossible sweetie, just… _Improbable''_

The Doctor still looked as though his jaw might hit the floor, ''I still can't believe it… I just can't… We're going to be parents!''

''Yes my love, we are'' she chuckled.

She spends a couple of days with him on the TARDIS, she takes is relatively easy – allowing him to drive and do things for her. Between that and the lovemaking there isn't much time for adventuring but it's a refreshing change that doesn't go unappreciated.

* * *

They're in America – the second time for River – with a Doctor who doesn't trust her from Adam. She only vaguely remembers Utah the first time round, brief memories of a time she'd rather forget. The Doctor keeps snapping at her and seems to have zero patience when they're in the same room. It hurts.

_Now, I love a bad girl, me, but trust you? Seriously._

* * *

One night she returns to prison worse for wear. She'd been out on her own again. There's matted blood in her hair and cuts and bruises scattered about her person. She drops onto her cot and into a dreamless sleep. It's been almost two months since she last saw the Time Lord and hasn't heard a word from him since. Perhaps tomorrow she will track him down.

The next day she wakes up soaked from the waist down in her own blood.

* * *

''I'm sorry Doctor Song but it seems your womb had taken some severe trauma; the foetus simply could not sustain life. I'm surprised your injuries didn't cause more serious damage if I'm completely honest'' but River wasn't listening. She was staring at the opposite wall of the prison consulting room. It had almost made it through six months of pregnancy. Almost.

* * *

The Doctor was devastated of course. However he and River dealt with grief in different ways. He would skulk about the TARDIS without uttering a word but the pain of the loss was etched across his face, weighing on his mind. There was going to be someone else _like_ him, it was the closest thing he was ever going to get to another Time Lord. He never once said out loud that he blamed River but she could probably guess that he was thinking it, that she was too care free, too inconsiderate, too self-centred and that she should have taken it easy. The gift they had been blessed with was something they never thought they would have. So when River had fallen pregnant it had been an impossible miracle.

* * *

Its years later. Her parents are long gone, living out the rest of their lives somewhere peacefully in New York, she'll never see them again, never hear their voice and she can't help feeling that her Doctor is going to go the same way, he's slipping away more and more each time and there's not a single thing she can do about it.

She'd been pardoned from prison some time ago; _Professor_ Song now lived in her 'on/off' house alone whilst the Doctor gallivanted the universe.

He visited though, as often as was possible.

* * *

She's pregnant again but this time only makes it to 16 weeks before she miscarries.

Her body just didn't seem to be able to cope with a Time Lord child.

* * *

He he finds her crying in her bedroom. He steps with caution inside the darkly lit room, shadows dance across the walls and on the carpet. She's weeping, her body heaving with sobs as she kneels on the floor, her face hidden in her arms on the bed.

His River. His lovely River. If only fate would have been kinder.

He says nothing only joins her on the floor and rests his chin on her shoulder.

''Oh River, I'm so sorry''

* * *

She blames herself for being too harum-scarum. She thinks that if she had taken more care then her body might, just _might_ have been able to inhabit a Time Lord child. But it's all if's and but's.

The Doctor told her to go find someone human, that he was prepared to let her go and she could go and have a normal life.

They'd argued over it and she called him a pretentious bastard and that she wasn't going to leave him for the sake of something they should have been able to work through, but that was the problem, they _weren't _working through it.

* * *

''We're just not compatible River… Your body just isn't capable, it's like Donna all over again'' he sighed, ''too much Time Lord''

She simply nods.

* * *

She'd come to accept it now. She remembers having a conversation with Amy, her mother, and she'd told her about what they must have done to her at Demon's Run. Amelia Pond would never be able to have any more children, but she'd had Melody – for whatever brief amount of time she'd held her in her arms, but then again, perhaps this was kinder.

You'll never miss what you've never had. Correct?

* * *

''We can try again'' the Doctor suggests one day when the subject is brought up again, ''if you like, that is…'' he's unsure how much time she has left, she's already a Professor and he imagines soon she'll be going to that god awful place where he'd first met her in his 10th regeneration.

''I'd like that'' River says in a tired whisper, although she doesn't think she could cope if it happened again.

* * *

She thinks about it sometimes, what their life would have been like. Would they have had her hair? Or his chin? God forbid they ever picked up his fashion sense. Would they all live in the TARDIS? She doubted it. Now looking back she thinks it would have been one big hassle. Keeping spoilers from each other whilst at the same time swapping over who looked after the children.

* * *

River is starting to look old now. Her hair's losing its bounce and lines were starting to creep up around her eyes and mouth.

_Never let him see you age. _She remembers that fateful day. She remembers the pain of having to break her own wrist free and then the Doctor – oh his face, so old and yet so young. And here she was starting to get wrinkles.

* * *

Years trickle by with no such luck but they'd each silently give up hope long, _long_ ago.

When she dies in The Library there are two children waiting for her.

_River, you know I can't give you children._ _He had said._


End file.
